What you hold dear in your heart will echo in eternity

(Paradiso, Canto II): Explaining the universe, Dante and Beatrice staring at the moon

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."

—Anton Chekhov

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Welcome to Dante Book Club, where you and I descend into Hell and Purgatory to be able to ascend to Paradise. Our guide in Paradise is Beatrice, and in this second Canto of the Paradiso, Beatrice gives Dante an exposition on the nature of the moon and the movement of the heavens. You can find the main page of the read-along right here, reading schedule here, and the list of chat threads here.

In each post you can find a brief summary of the canto, philosophical exercises that you can draw from it, themes, character, and symbolism explanations.

All the wonderful illustrations are done specially for the Dante Read-Along by the one and only Luana Montebello.

This Week’s Circle ⭕️

Dante’s warning to the unprepared reader to turn back - The First Heaven of the Moon - Dante’s question about the dark spots on the moon - Beatrice’s exposition on the nature of the movement of the heavens and their dispersal of power down through the spheres.

Canto II Summary:

From the Heaven of the sphere of the moon, Dante addressed his readers directly, warning them about the path ahead. Even those eager to learn and to hear his story were cautioned, lest they be unprepared to follow in Dante’s wake as he steered his ship of song and genius from time into eternity:

As the Philosopher states at the beginning of the First Philosophy, all human beings by nature desire to know.
Dante, Convivio I.i.1

Those who were half-hearted, light-minded, or fearful of the return should turn back. We have followed him in our ‘little barks,’ through the cruel seas of the Inferno and the great efforts against the tides of Purgatorio; here, we embark into the deep and endless sea of Paradiso. Where he goes now transcends the human experience.

Dante was the first—in his words—to document this uncharted journey and was propelled forward with the help of a Classical Trinity; Minerva, the moving force of the winds of wisdom, Apollo as his helmsman of sacred poetry, and the nine Muses as his guiding stars and inspiration, symbolic of the nine heavens of the celestial realm. He called out to those deemed able to follow:

You other few who turned your minds in time
unto the bread of angels, which provides
men here with life—but hungering for more—

you may indeed commit your vessel to
the deep salt-sea, keeping your course within
my wake, ahead of where waves smooth again.
ii.10-15

O blessed are those few who sit at the meal where the bread of angels is eaten!
Dante, Convivio I.i.7

Those lovers of wisdom who, on earth, spent their time preparing for such a vision—the philosophers and theologians who were dedicated to that bread of angels—would be able to keep up and follow in his wake, closely enough that the furrow of his ship would not have time to close before them as they followed. In life—the realm of time—it was possible to have knowledge from books alone, or knowledge from revelation. Dante called to those who had received such revelations, which could only be complete and come to its ultimate fulfillment in the afterlife, as fit to follow. With this daring assertion, Dante claimed the uniqueness of his own vision and ability to lead others to it as well.

So fantastic was the journey ahead, that even the feats of Jason could not outdo them. During his journey for the Golden Fleece with his crew of the Argonauts, he turned plowman to two mythically strong oxen in order to sow the dragon teeth that would sprout and grow into warriors in order to prove himself before the king of Colchis. He accomplished this through the magical assistance of Medea, unknown to his stunned crew, yet Dante’s readers would be more amazed than even they were at the scenes that lie ahead.

And now, from somewhere in the bowels of the earth, from the smoky stronghold where they slept, the pair of bulls appeared, breathing flames of fire. The Argonauts were terrified at the sight…the two bulls, bellowing loudly, charged and butted him with their strong horns. But he was not shifted from his stance, not by so much as an inch. The bulls snorted and spurted from their mouths devouring flames, like a perforated crucible when the leather bellows of the smith, sometimes ceasing, sometimes blowing hard, have made a blaze and the fire leaps up from below with a terrific roar. The deadly heat assailed him on all sides with the force of lightning. But he was protected by Medea’s magic…Castor and Polydeuces picked up the yoke and gave it to Jason…[who] bound it tight on the bull’s necks, lifted the bronze pole between them and fastened it to the yoke by its pointed end…like some ploughman using his Pelasgian goad, he pricked the bulls under their flanks and with a firm grip on its well-made handle guided the adamantine plough.
Apollonius of Rhodes, The Argonautica 143-144

Dante and Beatrice looking at the Spheres by Sandro Botticelli

Do you remain, even after the warning? If you are still with us, then count yourself among the blessed!

The thirst for the One who lived in the Empyrean realm had drawn them upward to the moon in an instant; while Beatrice gazed upward, Dante gazed upon her and the reflected light that shone off of her as a mirror. They moved as quickly as a bow releases its arrow, flies through the air and strikes its target. The imagery of this happening in reverse order only emphasized just how quickly they arrived.

I reached a place where I could see
that something wonderful drew me; and she
from whom my need could not be hidden, turned

to me (her gladness matched her loveliness):
“Direct your mind to God in gratefulness,"
she said; “He has brought us to the first star.”
ii.25-30

In Dante’s conception of cosmology, the moon could be called, alternately, a planet, a heaven, or a star. They did not only arrive in the sphere of the moon, which would be the setting for their discussion which comprises most of this canto, but they were literally in the moon itself, a brilliant and dense cloud that received them—Beatrice and Dante—into itself. Dante saw the moon as containing its own, as well as a reflected light and power; he even explored this idea in his other works:

So I say that although the moon receives its fulness of light from the sun alone, it does not follow that the moon is derived from the sun. Thus it should be recognized that the existence of the moon is one thing, its power another and its operation yet another. The moon does not in any way depend upon the sun—as far as its existence is concerned, nor as far as its powers are concerned, nor with regard to its operation as such. Because its movement arises from its own operation, its influence from the power of its own rays; it is even the source of some of its own light, as is obvious during its eclipse. But in order to operate more effectively and powerfully it receives something from the sun, i.e. abundant light; having received this, its power is increased.
Dante, de Monarchia III.iv.17-18

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In the story, the moon is the first stage in Dante’s journey through the heavens, for in the natural universe it is the planet nearest the earth. In the allegory, the moon symbolizes a tendency in the soul towards inconstancy, or a will insufficiently steadfast to withstand coercion.¹

The moon received them into itself without disruption of its form, just as light is contained within a drop of water without changing the shape of the water. This pointed to his incorporeal state, for in the body, “we can not see how things material can share one space” (37-38). Noting this ability for one essence to be within another essence (Dante’s soul within the material of the moon) would create an eagerness for those still living to see how “God and human nature were made one” (41) as a manifested reality, not only an ideal.

Dante replied in the affirmative to Beatrice’s wish that he direct his mind toward God, and posed the question whose answer would take up a scientific, philosophical, and theological answer in an exposition by Beatrice;

“With the most devotion I
can summon, I thank Him who has brought me
far from the mortal world. But now tell me:

what are the dark marks on this planet’s body
that there below on earth, have made men tell
the tale of Cain?”
ii.46-51

In its simplest form, Dante was asking Beatrice what to make of the craters of the moon, the light and dark parts we today might just call the ‘man in the moon.’ In Dante’s time, the image seen on the face of the moon was thought to be the banished Cain and his burden of thorns.

Cain with his thorns already
is at the border of both hemispheres
and there, below Seville, touches the sea.
Inferno xx.124-26

Cain, eldest son of Adam and Eve and murderer of his brother Abel, is here mentioned in connection with the old popular belief that the man in the moon was Cain with a bundle of thorns. According to the Italian tradition, Cain attempted to excuse himself for the murder of Abel and was condemned by God to be confined to the moon.²

Ascent of Dante and Beatrice by John Flaxman

The intricacy of this discussion, not to mention its outdated science, exemplifies those aspects of the Paradiso which modern readers often find hard to tolerate…the reader should best approach canto 2 (and, indeed, the whole Paradiso) in a spirit of comedy. On that understanding, it scarcely matters whether the astronomical information offered in this canto is right or wrong. Far more important is the pleasure that arises from entering into the intellectual game that Dante invites his reader to play, involving (as good games do) a serious engagement of curiosity, intelligence and a capacity for thought experiment.³

Beatrice explained, after this question about the dark spots on the moon, that human judgment cannot make rational conclusions when their reason cannot work out sufficiently what their senses are telling them, and this was the error in Dante’s thinking about the moon. She asked him to reconsider what he thought the answer was, and he presented the idea that the physical matter of the moon was made of material of different densities, which would account for the discoloration. Dante was thought to have gotten some of his ideas about this concept from the medieval French poem Roman de la Rose:

It seems to men that the moon may indeed not be clean and pure, because in some places it shows up dark. But it is because of its double nature that it appears opaque and cloudy in some places, shining in one part and ceasing to shine in another, because it is both clear and opaque. Thus what makes its light fail is the fact that the clear part of its substance cannot reflect the rays that the sun throws out toward it; instead they pass on through and beyond. But the opaque part, which can resist the rays well and overcome its light, shows the light.
Roman de la Rose, Jean de Meung and Guillaume de Lorris, 16833-16854

But no, she gently pointed out, Dante was incorrect in his conceptions on density, and this gave her the opportunity to begin her exposition on the science and philosophy of the moon. The realm of the fixed stars contained lights of different magnitude and luminosity:

The intensity of light from the stars is seen to vary as from one star to another; this variation is rightly attributed not to their differing material substance but to their varying active power and influence. If it were simply a question of density or rarity, this would mean that the stars were all of an identical specific nature; but this cannot be, for the divers virtues of life on earth are due to the divers formal principles of the stars.⁴

She continued her argument that the variety of densities in the material of the moon that Dante had suggested was not possible, saying that the moon must then be compared to marbled meat—layers of fat and lean—or pages of books, in the way they would represent their varieties in the materiality of the substance of the moon. Were this the case, the light of the sun would shine through the areas of lesser density during eclipses, and reflect off of the back of the moon in areas of greater density, as would a mirror:

If rarity does not run through and through
the moon, then there must be a limit where
thickness down not allow the light to pass;

from there, the rays of sun would be thrown back,
just as, from glass that hides lead at its back,
a ray of colored light returns, reflected.
ii.85-90

In order to prove her ideas through experimentation, she explained that a procedure with mirrors could be utilized; that regardless of how far away the light source was, the light would still reflect with the same brightness even with a different sized light. First, two mirrors would be placed before the viewer, one on each side, with a third placed in the middle set further back, so that they would be in the shape of a triangle. A light behind the viewer shining on the three mirrors would reflect the same brightness, even if the size was smaller on the middle mirror because of its further distance.

Now, just as the sub-matter of the snow,
beneath the blows of the warm rays, is stripped
of both its former color and its cold,

so is your mind left bare of error; I
would offer now to you a new form, light
so living that it trembles in your sight.
ii.106-111

Having proceeded through a lively laboratory account of how light is reflected in equal intensity from any reflective surface, the demonstration concludes with a beautiful evocation of the intellectual clarity that good teaching always aims to produce: the snows of confusion melt in the rays of the sun, and Dante is now ready to receive further and greater knowledge.⁵

Arrival to the sphere of the moon by Giovanni di Paolo di Grazzia ou Giovanni dal Poggio

Beatrice began a new line of argumentation, and described how the Primum Mobile, the ninth sphere of the heavens, received power from the Empyrean directly above it, discharging and dispersing it—that spiritual power originating with God—down through the lower realms of the heavens, beginning with the eighth sphere of the fixed stars and down to the first sphere of the moon. The ‘organs of the universe’ (121) are the planets and spheres operating as do the members of a body. The material dispersed is not just physical, but virtues effected by the movement of the Intelligences and other angelic beings, whose movement and disbursement of powers contribute to this distribution. Beatrice wanted Dante to be able to reason these ideas out on his own, and she made sure that he listened well.

From the neo-Platonists of the third century AD, the Christian (and Arab) Aristotelian tradition inherited the doctrine that their specific function and purpose was to move the heavenly spheres on God’s behalf.⁶

Just as the soul performs different functions throughout the body depending on the need of the different members, so does this function of God through the angelic intelligences in different degrees function through the universe. It is this—in a seemingly indirect, but rational way—that accounted for the spots on the moon. The unity of God was thus expressed through the multiplicity of creation.

It is similarly appropriate that canto 2, beneath its concern with moon spots, should carry a particularly varied subtext of light imagery: the dapple of lunar shadows, the colour of pearl, the effects of reflection from mirrors, the trembling of light on snow, or, perhaps most delicately, in the concluding lines where the flowing of virtú through the universe is seen (microscopically) as the flowing of the light of happiness through the pupil of the eye.⁷

How much more could be said on this exposition of light! However, to answer Dante’s question about the variables visible on the moon, Beatrice had unfolded to him a new view of the movements and functions of the universe, and if nothing else, can leave us in awe as to Dante’s ability to place the most scholastic conversation into terms of the most sublime poetry.

The Map of Paradise by Federico Zucchari

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💭 Philosophical Exercises

Free to all ill, till freed to none but ill,

Now this I will, anon the same I nill,

Appetite ere while, ere while Reason may,

Nere good, but when Gods Spirit beares sway.

Gustave Dore’s interpretation of Cain slaying the Abel

The story of Cain and Abel, though only sixteen verses long, about 250 words (depending on the language and translation) carries a weight that generations have struggled to lift. Its brevity is deceiving since its depth is oceanic.

At its heart lies a blindness not of the eyes, but of the soul. Cain kills Abel not merely out of jealousy, but because he misreads the divine order. He sees his brother receiving all the signs of grace: abundant harvests, divine favour, a life that seems lit from above. And Cain, like Dante the pilgrim in this canto, mistakes appearances for essence.

Dante looks at the moon and sees only what his senses can register:

It seemed to me that we were covered by
a brilliant, solid, dense, and stainless cloud,
much like a diamond that the sun has struck.

He interprets what is luminous as solid, what is radiant as material. So too did Cain: he looked outward, not inward. He assumed that the difference between himself and Abel was one of divine preference, not the result of what each carried in their heart.

When Dante and Beatrice are transferred to the first sphere Beatrice says:

“Direct your mind to God in gratefulness,”
she said; “He has brought us to the first star.”

Gratefulness. Yes, gratefulness is the hidden key in this canto, even when the shadow of Cain looms overhead.

In certain folktales, Cain is not simply a murderer. He is an exile, cast to the moon to wander eternally, burdened by a bundle of thorns. And this image, Cain on the moon, is precisely where Dante places us now, as we gaze upon the first sphere of Paradise, and still fail to see clearly.

Ask anyone: Why did Cain kill his brother Abel?

And the answer comes reflexively: Because he was envious.

But that response confuses appearance for essence. Cain’s envy was not the root, it was the symptom. As Nietzsche once wrote: People often mistake consequence with the cause.

The root was something deeper, and far more tragic: Cain misunderstood the moral architecture of the universe. He thought grace was unfairly given. He mistook the external sign for the internal worth.

He saw that Abel was blessed, but did not ask why. He did not pause to reflect on the way divine justice flows, not to those whom the world deems fortunate, but to those whose inner disposition makes space for grace. Cain’s offering lacked heart, lacked depth. And when it was not accepted, he did not search himself. He struck outward instead.

This is where gratefulness enters—not as politeness or passive acceptance, but as perception. ‘To be grateful’ today often means acknowledging material things that you forget you’re privileged to own. But being grateful is more than that. Being grateful is not just thanking fortune for providing you with a home; fortune, as we learned from Inferno, can easily take things away.

To be grateful is to learn how the universe works and to be glad for it. Allow me to explain

II. The Two Universes

In his work Fear and Trembling, the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard shares a Problemata. He says that there are two worlds that we inhabit, and how they work differs. In the external world, for example, we see injustices: a man might work hard all his life but never reach the wealth of a fortunate son of a wealthy media magnate, who inherited his money from a rich parent. Here, Kierkegaard says, those who do not work are the ones who get to eat bread.

The inner world, the second realm we inhabit, works differently. Here, those who work get to eat bread. Here, the sun does not shine on good and evil alike. To be grateful in this context is to know that the inner universe works differently, to recognise its existence, and to be glad to be privileged to participate in it.

Here, effort bears fruit.

Here, the sun does not shine equally on good and evil alike.

Here, intention, struggle, and sincerity matter.

To be grateful, in this second sense, is not to thank fate for giving you comfort, but to recognize that a deeper universe exists, one governed by moral causality. And to be glad you have the chance to live in that universe too.

III.

Into itself, the everlasting pearl
received us, just as water will accept
a ray of light and yet remain intact.

How different these lines sound to our inner ear when we understand the Kierkegaardian laws of the two worlds we inhabit. The inner world is truly like a ray of light being accepted by water.

Beatrice wants Dante to understand this for himself, for she asks him: “What do you think about it yourself?”

I had this Beatricean moment of revelation in my own life, and I wrote about it in my piece called The Art of Teaching.

In it, I tell the story of two teachers. The first one, whose name was Aleksey, used to teach art by talking about mere appearances: useless facts like the exact dates of birth or death of famous artists (“What is the exact date when Da Vinci was born?”), or vague categories like artistic movements (“Was Da Vinci a Renaissance or Baroque artist?”).

I was lucky enough that during one of our school trips, I—being a rebellious kid—sneaked away from the gallery group, slipping out from under Aleksey’s attention. I accidentally met a lady (who turned out to be the gallery curator) who noticed that I was captivated by one of the paintings.

For the first time in my life, someone began asking me questions like: “What do you think this painting tries to convey?” “What emotions do you feel?” “What makes this painting different for you from others in this room?”

These questions invited me to participate in art myself, to feel it, to be part of it. I was a fickle ray of light being accepted by the grand art that conveyed a message well beyond my teenage comprehension.

Beatrice does this to Dante, and Dante’s answer is rebuked because of its short-sightedness, just as my interpretation of the painting that captivated me in that gallery was. And yet, participation matters. One must participate through intellect in the grand immaterial forces that move our universe.

This is what it means to be truly educated: to stand in wonder at how interconnected everything is, to stand in awe that not a single grain of sand is superfluous or accidental in the universe, and yet to know that the boundaries of what we don’t know expand the more we learn about how this universe works.

The world that Beatrice describes is not a mechanism, but a symphony. We can describe why a symphony works, and yet, we can’t.

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This Week’s Sinners and Virtuous 🎭

(Themes, Quotes, Terms and Characters)

A woman with a globe containing a face; representing the faculty of the will. Engraving by T. Jenner

I. Dante’s Admonition

O you who are within your little bark,
eager to listen, following behind
my ship that, singing, crosses to deep seas,

turn back to see your shores again: do not
attempt to sail the seas I sail; you may,
by losing sight of me, be left astray.
~ lines 1-6, Paradiso II

We are his fellow travellers, and now he is our guide. We are his Dante-pilgrims, and he is our Virgil through the realm of Paradiso. Just as Dante feared losing sight of Virgil, so must we be careful in attending to the explanations of our companion if we hope to reach the highest heavens.

The reason lies not only in their difficulty (though that certainly exists) but in the danger of remaining on the surface. If we refuse to go beyond our shallow understanding of the world, if we close our ears to the larger symphony at play in life, then we will never grasp the true meaning of Paradiso.

II. What you hold dear in your heart will echo in eternity

What we hold here by faith, shall there be seen,
not demonstrated but directly known,
even as the first truth that man believes.
 ~ lines 43-45, Paradiso II

These lines belong in the Quotes section, for I wrote them to remind myself of a deeper wisdom. What you believe in, your principles, the convictions you refuse to surrender, define you in the inner Kierkegaardian world.

Just as your social status, possessions, or job might define you in the external world,

so is your inner world shaped by the work you’ve done on your soul and the principles you live by.

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Quotes 🖋️

(The ones I keep in my journal as reminders of eternal wisdom):

The thirst that is innate and everlasting—
thirst for the godly realm—bore us away
as swiftly as the heavens that you see.

~ lines 73-75, Paradiso, Canto II

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1. Dorothy L. Sayers, Paradise 67

2. Charles S. Singleton, Commentary on Inferno 362

3. Robin Kirkpatrick, Paradiso 335-36

4. Sayers 70

5. Fitzgerald 336

6. Allen Mandelbaum, Paradiso 712

7. Kirkpatrick 338